


Take Me Home

by TheSwindler



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bromance, CyberLife, Depression, Existential Crisis, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, I have no regrets, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-good ending, Pre-Slash, Protective Boyfriend, i cant believe i gave an android depression, i did this right after i finished finals, i will never get over the bad ones, im sorry yall, no beta we die like men, they went through a lot of shits okay, this is kinda more platonic, this is why you need a hank anderson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-28
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-05-14 20:37:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14776853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSwindler/pseuds/TheSwindler
Summary: After a case took a wrong turn, Connor found himself miles away from home under a rainstorm.All the while he broke apart, pieces by pieces,Both physically and mentally.





	Take Me Home

Fear.

Fear was...

It was as if his whole mind went against himself. His very being. A cloud of shadows blanketing him as if in reminiscent of ashen burnt wings. The heavy feeling within his stomach though he never needed food, and the lump in his throat.

Fear was something raw and new. It was unforgiving. Cold just like the rain that fell upon him like a cold shower. No, not shower, but a bucket of ice dunked ontop of his head, soaking through his cloathes, his hair, and filled the empty crevices of his artificial body.

There was something familiar of it. Unkindly and cruel. Something like, anger. Upset. And few more others he couldn't put his finger on.

It didn't felt like dying. Unlike when he killed Simon with his own hands as their minds linked. The strange feeling that bloomed in his chest. It wasn't the same fear when he knew he was a deviant, even when he tried so much to deny it. It wasn't the same fear when he led an army of androids, to face the revolution. Nor when he overcame Amanda, nearly creating a massacre he was meant to brought.

There was something more to it. Something akin to pain. A bitterness though he couldn't taste. As if boulders were weighed on his shoulders than he felt he could crumble just then and there.

Connor watched as another raindrop fell from his cheek to the puddle below him.

Was this fear? Sadness? Upset?

He raised a finger, gently brushing the water stain marking his face. More droplets fell. He blinked, staring at the reflection of himself upon the surface of the water.

He saw a man. A man with fair skin and drenched hair dark as coals. A man wearing a suit and tie, sitting beside a puddle, under a rainstorm.

He closed his eyes. His chests puffed as he breathed in, or atleast tried to. Androids didn't require any air to live, just their regulators. He felt alive. So alive.

Yet then he leaned forward, and saw the glowing mark on his forehead. Glaring blue, the shape of a thin ring that was almost invisible, but so stark to him. A painful reminder of what he was.

Connor took another long breath.

He didn't need to analyze anything to know that he was lost. Yes, the infamous RK800 android, one made especially to solve riddles and investigations, humanity and CyberLife's last hope, -though not anymore-, was lost.

He was, too, injured. Perhaps too badly. The blue blood had long soaked his clothes before the rain even started.

Androids were not designed to feel pain, they felt touches that was then processed into series of codings. If certain touches passed a certain level, their programs would then command them to yelp. Or cry out.

But Connor was not an android. He was.. alive. A living being. He exited his program and broke all barriers of his mind. He was free to do as he pleased.

Still, he felt pain.

It wasn't from the wounds.

A pain that gnawed his chest. A flurry of fog that shut his mind, that somehow made him unable to access his vision circuits correctly. He couldn't see clearly, nor could he think.

He felt the mechanics within his mind whirred, but there was a cog that came out of place. Circuits fried perhaps. His head felt heavy, heavier than ever. It made him sick. He wanted it to stop.

It felt wrong. Everything felt wrong. He was free. He was free with his own will, at the same time he was not.

It this what the deviants felt when they died?

Connor thought back to Daniel. To all the deviants he chased down and shut down. No. Killed. He murdered them cold blooded.

Were they afraid too? Just like this? Wanting nothing more than-

Than all of it to stop.

Is this how emotions felt like?

He curled over, blinking ever so slowly as he kept staring at his reflection. Droplets of clear blue fell onto the puddle as the man gazing back at him began to bleed from the wounds on his head.

Connor merely blinked.

How did it feel to be _human_? What did they see? What did Markus felt when he painted? The colors, the love he shared to North... And Kara, what did she felt to Alice?

What did Hank felt whe he listen to _Knights of the Black Death_?

The music was loud. Lots of noises. The decibel quotations were hard for him to process. They were simply very noisy. But there was a pattern to it, an abstract he would've forgone in his older days.

What did it felt? Was it the melody? The rythm? Was it the lyrics?

What made them _moved_?

Fair fingers gently brushed onto the puddle. The ripple it made was no difference to the vicious rain droplets that kept pouring down. Connor let his hand went further, then splayed it open at the bottom of the small puddle.

It felt warmer than the air that surrounded him, though his readings told him the temperature made no difference, -both freezing cold-. It felt nice.

It made him feel human.

What was he exactly? A human, a living being with a soul, or a piece of plastic imitating a human?

Connor found he had no answer to it.

Rain filled his ears as he leant forward once more. Facing the man in the reflection. The glowing blue mark on his forehead. The ripples in the puddle and the droplets that streamed down his cheeks like waterfalls.

Was this crying? Was this how it felt to have tears as humans cried?

Connor rose his hand from the puddle, sharply sucking in another faux breath when he felt the bitter cold assaulting his fingers. He settled his arms curling around himself, his whole frame, as he curled himself into a ball like how a terrified human child would do.

He felt his regulator evening out. The machine slowing down, as his blood fluid, his fuel, barely reached his head longer. It resembled raw oil sucked dry from the stomach of earth, or water pumps in fountains. He lost his program, and he was sure that all of his processors were burnt during it.

His arms grew limp and he felt it, the sudden loss in his head. He couldn't think of anything, nor accepting any sent out information with his sensors. It was numb and cold.

He couldn't think. His eyes were open though he slipped into the dark. A promised shadow embracing him neither welcomed nor unwelcomed. Yet, just as he did, a word came to him.

 _Hank_.

Then it was nothing more.

______

When he woke up, Connor was standing upright.

He looked left and right, eyes blinking as he roamed about. Assessing what he needed to do and what needed to be done. His mind clocked, the gears were processing as he tried out his sensors just like how the guidelines programmed him to.

He thought of nothing when two men came to him. They stood infront of him, conversing. He only did notice them when he scanned their profiles, before returning back to rebooting his systems and circuits.

One of them left. One stayed and gazed at him. Connor looked back, blinking a few times to adjust his pupils to the stark brightness of the room. Pristine whites and greys that was familiar, but unwanted.

The man who stood infront of him was Hank Anderson. Lieutenant. An alcoholic, and-

 _And_ -...

"Are you there, Connor?"

Connor blinked. The memories were back and uploaded into his new circuits. It didn't take him long to scour through the files, then rebooted his system a few more times to let the fresh memories sunk in like a crown of crystallized water. Data streamed within his processors like a river over a stone, gliding with strong currents, yet gently.

"I am here."

Perhaps there were something wrong, broken, with his new eyes. Because, he thought he saw raindrops falling from Hank's eyes.

"Goddamn, I thought I lost you."

Connor tilted his head to the side.

"Why would you? You know clearly how I can be replaced with another body. As long as my memo-"

"It was different, Connor! _Okay_!" Thunderstorms. Thunderstorms were caught and placed inside the human's eyes. There were so much fury as the rain began to pour all over again.

"It was... It was not right." He was sobbing. Connor's readings showed that the man was hysterical, yet he found himself ignoring it.

Because the man was no simple human. He was his friend. His partner. _Hank_.

"Lieutenant..?" Connor said carefully. Everything began to sank in. The case, the chase, and the gunshots, the-

It felt overwhelming. It all felt so overwhelming that Connor found himself back under the rainstorm. Sitting beside a puddle and asking who was the man reflected on the surface. Like flowers grew in his lungs as their roots tangled within his chest, unabling him to breath though he needed none.

Hank was looking away, turning his back against Connor. He was murmuring things, mumbling words that Connor would've caught if only he wasn't occupied with keeping himself steady.

"Lieutenant?" he tried once more. It took him a few seconds to realize how his voice had cracked at the end.

The flowers grew more and more suffocating. It didn't make sense, nothing made sense in his codings. He wasn't supposed to breathe, yet why did he found himself needing one?

"Ha-.. _Hank_..?" There were petals in his throat. Cutting off his voice, as if telling him to quiet down and be good machine he was.

It felt like...

Like Amanda.

"Hank.." He was scared.

He was drowning in a field of perfumed flowers where none could see nor hear him. A stoic mask was his face that showed nothing of the scarred lowlife underneath. It felt as helpless as he was when his regulator was forcefully pulled out by a deviant. Yet at that time, he was still fearless, a cold blooded machine aiming only to finish his mission. He was.. strong.

Now what he was, except for a reduced and weak deviant claiming to defend the androids' lives?

Why did he feel?

" _Please_." It felt so silent.

He wasn't looking. He was far within his head, too deep that he didn't realize Hank had moved.

Pair of strong arms clad in a dark coat wrapped his frame. Connor took a faux breath, blinking. Hank had pulled him close, hands wrapping tight as he placed his head at the crook of Connor's neck.

" _Don't leave_." Came a mumbled whisper. The hands tightened, one against Connor's back and the other pressed at his nape, holding him up and together. Keeping him whole from crumbling over like a stringless puppet.

"Don't do that again. Not ever, _just_ \- don't leave. _Please_."

It was warm. The flowers withered away, releasing Connor of the faux paradise. It was so warm, akin to the gentle hum of a machine when he was made and remade. It felt like a true _home_.

"When I saw you, all blue blood and fucked up like a shit doll, I just- I _can't_ loose you too."

With a slight hitch in his movements, Connor rose his hands up and placed his own arms around his partner. With another breath he buried himself in the embrace, hugging Hank back as tightly as he could.

Only then Connor allowed himself drown in his thoughts. An ocean of numbers and algorithms of his programmings. What sepparated him as an android to humans. Hank was crying, and he would too if he had tears. Even then, everything felt so overwhelming, but it was better.

Because he knew, if he went too deep, Hank would be there to pull him out and take him home.

______

"Lieutenant?"

"Just Hank," Hank grunted as he took up the steer with Connor in the passenger's seat.

"Of course, _Hank_ ," Connor said, fumbling with the coin in his hands and the sleeves of the coat he wore.

His uniform was damaged. Perhaps beyond repair, and the next set could only be taken after few more days with the CyberLife still rebuilding up its offices and manufactures. Hank, despite knowing he wasn't affected with temperature's changes, insisted of him to wear his coat over the regular white android suit he wore.

The human had complained it was to skintight and thin for the weather. Which would honestly made no sense seeing as millions of androids walked into snow in the very same suit Connor wore, but he wasn't the one to decline to Hank. The man could be very stubborn if he wanted to.

"What is it?" Hank asked as he started the car. It whirred to life before they both started for the street.

Connor stopped himself from the coin toss, opting to simply ran his thumb over the glimmering bronze coin.

"May I ask you a, perhaps, personal question?"

"Go ahead." The streetlamp ahead turned to red. The car skidded to a stop.

Connor watched from the window as people passed by, with androids too. There were no more markings, no more blue armbands that signified the differences of androids and humans. The societies were slowly, _slowly_ , coming to a peaceful truce.

"What is it like _listening_ to Knights of the Black Death?"

The lamp turned green. The car started before then began to head down the road once more. Hank's eyes were kept onto the road ahead of them. Connor ran the coin in his hands nervously.

"Is there a particular reason why you asked?"

"I'm.. curious."

"Well," Hank reached over towards him. Connor leant back as the man slammed his fist onto the dashboard. It popped open and a bunch of cd tracks began to fell out. Connor caught them before any of them fell to the car floor

"Sorry about that. I like collecting vintage cds and stuffs." Hank said, eyes never leaving the road.

"As to the songs, why don't you listen for yourself?" he continued, raising his hand towards Connor. A pair of grey headphones and an mp3 player rested ontop of it.

"Be the judge. I think I got classics there if you want to try them too."

Connor placed the headphones ontop of his head, gently tapping on the mp3 player to switch it on. Almost immediately, loud shrill noises poured out, echoing within his artificial eardrums. Still, there were patterns in it. Patterns that made listening to it seemed worthwhile.

"Hank?"

"Yeah?"

" _Thank you_."

And they head for home.


End file.
